1. Technical Field of the Invention
The technology described herein relates to construction of 3D building models and more specifically for tools to correct building geometries within the 3D building models.
2. Background
Images of a geographic region are used for various uses such as construction and military purposes. Construction planners utilize detailed maps and images of a potential construction site during development planning. Military intelligence use image data to identify or monitor potential military targets or strategic locations. Satellite images of an area are available for these purposes, but due to their “bird's eye” or orthogonal view point, it is difficult to use these images for determining the height of imaged structures or characteristics of imaged structures. These aspects of structures are visible from an angled or “oblique” view point. In alternative embodiments, oblique images are captured through aerial photography. To correlate information between different oblique images, terrain maps and orthogonal images, it is necessary to have precise information about each of the oblique images and the sources of the oblique images. For each image, the camera location, speed of travel, lens focal length, camera angle, altitude, range finding information and similar information are needed to correlate the images to a terrain map.
Construction of 3D building models based on available images collected, in some constructions, results in less than perfect representations. These potential inaccuracies may compromise the precision of information extrapolated from maps using the 3D models. Automatic processing tools, in some instances, confuse building edges with artifacts within the images causing generated 3D rooftop geometries and wall edge definitions to be incoherent. Propagation of the errors throughout the various models within the map affects other models and tools that utilize the information.